Songs and a spot of poetry
BAGESHREE S.
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Writing songs for a film is the delicate art of balancing the creative impulse and the compulsions of the industry, says veteran lyricist R.N. Jayagopal
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PHOTO: SAMPATH KUMAR G.P.
SCREEN CHEMISTRY R.N. Jayagopal: `Everything in a film is a collective effort. No one person can claim credit for the success of a song'
R.N. Jayagopal describes the atmosphere in which he has penned some of his best songs: a hotel room, a music director busy trying various permutations and combinations on the harmonium, a director trying to explain the nuances of the situation, someone hollering for coffee, someone one else going out to fetch more cigarettes... and himself trying to find the right word and the right image.
A radical departure from all the stuff we have heard about the creative process: far from the madding crowd, under the greenwood tree, looking pensive and chewing on a pencil to recollect memory in tranquillity...
Huge repertoire
Jayagopal, the well-known lyricist who has written over 1,600 songs for Kannada films in the 40-odd years of his career, will tell you films are an entirely different ball game. The luxury of solitude and leisure are simply not part of the deal in a film where "everything is a collective effort". The important thing is not to see them as restrictions, but accept them as a given. "In fact, it's easier to write in a musical atmosphere," says Jayagopal. "And a director can spark off something by describing a situation vividly."
He recalls how he wrote the famous song "Haadonda haaduve nee kelu maguve" for Naandi as director Lakshminarayan described the context and the state of mind of the protagonist and composer G.K. Venkatesh sat next to him trying out tunes that might match it. That day, even Rajkumar, who played the lead, had dropped in to check how things were going. "I wrote the song in some five minutes!" he recalls.
If there is one thing he sorely misses in today's film industry, it is this collective participation by everyone in every department of the process of filmmaking. During the early days when there were no facilities to record a tune even as it was being composed, Jayagopal, himself a trained violinist, too would take down the notations and correct the composer if he got a note wrong while recording later. "I think what we have really lost is a certain personal touch." It's just not the same when a director sends a tune on tape with an instruction as vague as: "Write a duet for this tune." Jayagopal says it's like being blindfolded and left free to wander in a huge desert. "You just don't know where to head. Total freedom does not ensure a successful song. It should fit into the larger scheme of things. As I said, it's a collective effort. No one person can claim credit for the success of a song."
During what he describes as the golden period of Kannada cinema, between the Sixties and Eighties, there were perceptive directors like Puttanna Kanagal who valued a song and took extra trouble to render it with sensitivity on screen. Jayagopal remembers that Puttanna did "patch-up shooting" and spent an extra Rs. 50,000 to include the song "Gaganavu ello, bhumiyu ello" to Gejje Pooje much after the shooting schedule was completed. Puttanna liked the lyrics and was convinced that it would add to the flow of the film. "It was a pleasure to work those days!"
It was also a time when Kannada cinema had not yet lost its middle-class audience. Jayagopal recalls that the day Puttanna's Belli Moda was released in 1967, the film Dr. Rajkumar was released in the theatre opposite. And both ran to packed houses because they attracted different kinds of audiences.
In the changed scenario — where there is "greater emphasis on rhythm than a poetic turn of phrase" and the middle class viewers rarely go to the theatres to watch a Kannada film — Jayagopal doesn't particularly mind not being a lyricist in the "running" in the industry. He is happier staying put in Chennai and managing the Vidya Vinaya Vinoda School which also offers education in Kannada medium. He has also been busy as an office-bearer of the Indian Performing Rights Society, an organisation that fights for the rights of music composers, lyricists and singers. He has directed a few films and television soaps. "Film industry is a peculiar creature. It will summon you if it wants you even if you are in Timbuktu. But will pass you by if you are not wanted even if you are next to it!" he smiles.
As he turns 70, he has no regrets about always being called a "film lyricist" and never being crowned a "poet" in Karnataka, where these two categories rarely step out of their demarcated territories. Having been brought up in an atmosphere of theatre and films (his father was the legendary R. Nagendra Rao and Jayagopal holds a degree in sound engineering), he knows that the most important thing in a film is to "keep things simple, acceptable" and try something novel within that framework.
No doubt, Jayagopal has, on more than one occasion, bent the language to the point of distorting it because of the industry's insistence on prioritising rhyme over reason, as critic N.S. Shreedhara Murthy points out in an article in the Kannada magazine Mallige. And considering his huge repertoire of songs, it's not surprising that images too tend to get repeated. But when you scan the songs Jayagopal has written over the years, you see that his brand of "novelty" comes from using colloquial language as a medium of poetic expression when Sanskrit-heavy songs in the company drama style were in vogue. One can see remnants of the older style in his very first song he wrote for his father's film Premada Putri in 1957, "Thribhuvana janani jaganmohini".
Simple and poetic
But his later songs are marked by a striking simplicity. "Karpoorada gombe naanu, minchanthe bali bande neenu" from Nagara Haavu captures the physical chemistry between a man and a woman through the simple and telling image of camphor and fire. In "Naguva nayana madhura mauna... ", wonderfully composed by Ilaiyaraja for Pallavi Anupallavi (Maniratnam's debut film), the woman urges the man to tread gently on the carpet of dreams she has spread for him. Songs such as "Hoovu cheluvella thandenditu" and "Neerinalli aleya ungura" have the alluring quality of a playful banter.
In contrast, his famous cabaret song "Joke naanu balliya minchu" has the woman warning the men of the world about her glance which is as deadly as the sharp edge of a sword. You have the same defiant female voice in songs such as "Sanyasi sanyasi Arjuna sanyasi" and "Vahre mere Muruga".
Jayagopal has been long enough in the industry to understand the delicate balancing act that being part of the commercial film industry involves. "Acceptance or rejection is immediate in a film. The lyrics have to have something extra... Not totally strange, but something slightly out of the ordinary run of things for them to work."
A seminar and a music programme has been organised at Surana College, near Southend Circle, to mark the 70th birthday of R.N. Jayagopal on October 8 and 9.
The inauguration is at 9.30 a.m. tomorrow.
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